


Clotpolishness

by Tierfal



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Humor, M/M, Porn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-02
Updated: 2012-04-02
Packaged: 2017-11-02 22:57:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/374289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tierfal/pseuds/Tierfal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the prompt:<br/><i>Bathing. Merlin calls Arthur a clotpole one too many times, and consequences ensue.  Bonus points for somehow incorporating the phrase "that's what she said" in a new and creative way.</i></p>
<p>Pretty much… that. :D</p>
            </blockquote>





	Clotpolishness

When Arthur has been out training all day, his exhaustion and frustration make him even more abrasive than usual. On these evenings, Merlin takes great pains to keep the bathwater warm and to imbue it with a very faint, calming scent of lavender, and he frequently runs his fingers soothingly through Arthur’s hair.

There’s a little bit of affection in it, but mostly he just knows that if he’s not careful, Arthur will throw vases at his head with alarming accuracy, and then he’ll have to try not to bleed everywhere as he cleans up the pieces.

The muscles of Arthur’s shoulders go visibly jellied at Merlin’s touch. Never in his life has Merlin seen someone carry so much tension in his neck. Arthur clears his throat to speak, and Merlin vaguely hopes for one of those backhanded compliments that make him want to hug the prince and then feed him something that gives him dysentery.

“This room is a sty, Merlin,” Arthur half-sighs and half-moans, his eyes falling closed.

Merlin massages his scalp and murmurs, warmly and reassuringly, “That’s because you went on a destructive rampage this afternoon searching for the tunic _you_ lent out, you clotpole.”

Arthur goes tense again and jerks out from under Merlin’s hands, swiveling, his eyes open again but narrowed now.

“ _That’s_ it,” he says.

Apparently this is what a second wind looks like.

Arthur rockets out of the tub, a streak of damp golden-brown hair and scrubbed pink skin, and tackles a howling Merlin to the extremely unforgiving stone of the floor. Merlin thinks that the immediate chafing of his newly-wet clothes might actually be worse than the brief but painful death he is about to suffer. He would have liked to have said goodbye to Gaius, though at least now he won’t have to confess about the vial of complicated-looking potion he knocked over this morning.

As Arthur pins his wrists above his head and very damply straddles his hips, Merlin peeks through partly-squinted eyes and waits for the killing blow.

Except then Arthur kisses him, hot and hard and reckless—and maybe the magic’s making him crazy again, but Merlin can almost taste the words that aren’t as forthcoming as Arthur’s tongue.

Merlin completely forgets to breathe, which is stupid, because he’s made that mistake before and regretted it; when Arthur draws back, he gasps a little and stares dumbly.

“Say it again,” Arthur says.

“Say what?” Merlin manages. “Clotpole?”

He isn’t expecting to be kissed again—more vigorously, if that’s even possible; with more heat and an unclothed knee pressed between his legs—and that has to be the only reason he lets out something that may bear a passing resemblance to a whimper.

Arthur draws back, eyes blazing, but he’s panting a little, too. “Say it again.”

“I don’t know what you want from me.” Merlin is starting to get dizzy. He really should have listened to Will about the breathing and the not passing out and missing the good part. “You being gorgeous and naked and the prince of Camelot does not and will never change the fact that you are the epitome of clotpolishne—”

Arthur gives up on trying to kiss him into submission and ducks down to suck at Merlin’s throat, shifting his knee, grasping Merlin’s wrists tighter as he writhes against the combination of sensations, all of them too-good and overwhelming.

“Did you bolt the door?” he asks faintly. “Because your father could walk in right n—”

“ _Shut up_ , Merlin,” Arthur hisses, and that—bizarrely—is so familiar that it settles the riot of insects that seem to have taken up residence in Merlin’s stomach.

“Oh, but I don’t want to,” he says. “I think you might have to make me.”  
Although Arthur is a young man of many talents, Merlin would not have placed money on one of them being the ability to shuck another talented young man’s clothes off in a matter of split-seconds.

“Holy hell,” Merlin says. “Where did you learn to do that? And don’t you dare say the barracks.”

“I’m going to cut your tongue out,” Arthur says idly, nibbling his way down Merlin’s chest, studiously ignoring the way Merlin squeaks when it tickles. “You’ll be more fun as a mute.”

“You’d hate it,” Merlin says. “You’d have no one with whom to exchange witty repart— _ohGodArthur_.”

“I like that even better than ‘Sire,’” Arthur says, and licks at Merlin’s increasingly prominent erection again.

Merlin squirms more, and Arthur releases his wrists only to plant a hand immovably on one of his shoulders. The cold stone beneath them and the wet warmth of Arthur’s mouth and hands and chest makes Merlin’s head spin so fast the tummy bugs come back.

Then Arthur runs light fingertips down the backs of Merlin’s thighs, and Merlin’s heartbeat is so loud in his ears that he almost doesn’t hear his own mouth running off.

“What scares me is that my mother—”

“Predicted that I was more invested in you than I was liable to demonstrate?”

Merlin adds _Frighteningly Complex Foreplay Vocabulary_ to Arthur’s list of talents. “That’s what she said.”

“Mmm. Did she predict what would happen if you talked to me about _your mother_ whilst I was seducing you?”

“I think she’d just be glad you aren’t doing it in her house; the walls are really— _ohfuck_.”

Arthur exhales a cool breath on the place he just finished mouthing thoroughly. “That’s pretty much the idea, yes.”

Merlin claws at the stones of the floor for a crack, for some way to ground himself, for reassurance that this is real—maybe just to spark enough pain his fingers to distract him from the fact that Arthur Pendragon’s mouth is all over his cock, and his head is about to explode. Arthur will almost certainly torment his spirit about the mess.

“Are you sure this is a—”

Arthur hisses, which feels _amazing_. Merlin immediately forgets where that sentence was going to go.

“Are you even _capable_ of shutting up? All I ask is _two minutes_ , Merlin. Two minutes on _your behalf_.”

“You’re not _that_ good,” Merlin says.

There is a weighty pause.

Then Arthur goes for the bath oils.

This is _much_ better than another clotpole/idiot argument.


End file.
